Using the "Official" Pi wifi adaptor

I have a Pi 2B with the standard OS, which, now is somewhat surplus to requirements. I decided to build a Piratebox with the thing, which went without problems for the beginning of the install, but now I've hit the snag that wifi is not enabled. The system sees the wifi dongle, since the monitor records the events on fitting or removing the dongle. (I've a keybpard, mouse and a Lilliput monitor attached). Under the original build, wifi was no problem. Whilst there seems plenty of advice on wifi for the standard build, I've not come across anything specific to the Piratebox build. can anyone point me the way forward?

do you mean, you installed PirateBox manually and did not use our custom image?